I didn’t write last night I did however, volunteer at the Saint Paul Curling club.

In last night's project, we unfurled long sheets of plastic and stapled them to the walkways or over the seat, so the flooding of the ice floor (seen in this photo with ice) can start in a few weeks. Our club is not year-round, we take a break to work on club projects and repairs.

Season preparation begins

Yes, the curling club prepareth for a new season of curling!

There are plenty of projects to be completed – new lighting in the back stairs, new TV installations and the office is getting repainted.

I appreciate the curling fam so much that contributing in this small, and yet meaningful way helps everything feel “greater.”

Plus, it is never a bad thing to connect with people you think of as family and josh about the latest goings on.

We lost a few members back-to-back over the course of the summer, a more somber reflection. A few of us on Tuesday night work crew spoke about our friend Mike Staffaroni. His teammates reformed and added a fourth player. A palpable sadness lingered when his name was mentioned.

Our long-time kitchen manager is in hospice care with advanced cancer. He continues to take visitors and when things are going better on a given day, chatting with them as though nothing has changed.

Ever changing landscapes

Change is inevitable, and over the years good friends have come and gone from the curling club. Some through life altering or ending circumstances, others due to divorce and some because they chose to head to other states and places for work. Nevertheless, each year, a certain consistency is self-evident and steady. Some jokes get recycled, the furniture occasionally wobbles, and the ice is never the way we’d think is “perfect.”

Curling for me is a life-changing sport. Maybe I wish I’d grown up here, like so many of the legacy families – in which curling was introduced first as a baby in a basket as Mom and Dad curled Friday Mixed, later joining juniors on Saturday mornings and progressing to Junior Nationals or the Olympics. Still, curling came to me just when I needed it. A type of divine intervention to the journey I undertook moving to Minnesota.

Early days

I remember back to those first few years, learning balance and falling consistently. Then there was the process of painstakingly obtaining equipment – a broom, a slider, later replaced by official curling shoes and of course all the clothing styles and types. What would be required to stay as warm as possible for two straight hours on the ice?

Trying on teams, skips and nights of the week. Adding and subtracting the number of nights I curled. Subbing in on teams across the map so that I built up a knowledge of differing styles of play. Improving each season as I progressed from shaky and uncontrolled deliveries to focus, and often, making the shots that were called.

Physically and emotionally, there is something about curling that tests our limits as humans in the safe space of comradery, family and etiquette.

Clarity and form

Many times, over the years, being at the curling club throwing rocks, as the 42-pound granite play pieces are called, helped me to forget for a moment the troubles or concerns of the day, for just long enough sometimes that solutions often presented themselves.

On other occasions, members of the club were there for moves or rides or simply as friends. My entire kitchen collection (almost) was established through a donation of one of the curling members who’d recently gotten married and had extra items.

More recently, I started a bonspiel team called “Team D’Bed Rocks.” I am having fun building the team roster and playing with our bonspiel aliases which all have some sexual innuendo. I love the interaction and questions that come about. Hopefully, this season I get a logo and banner made as well as name badges.

Throughout the years I have been tested by this family, laughed, cried and enjoyed countless shared experiences which made me a better, more richly nuanced human.

I can’t imagine having survived eight years and seasons without them. Even the two seasons I only played half-time due to school requirements when I finished my MBA were key to my sanity.

Community is so vital to feeling connected to the great thing we call life. Holding us firm when life gets shaky, providing consistency and resolve. And when things are amazingly good – like that time I won a championship game with Team Fenner (see the blog here) -- the pats on the pack are worth their weight in gold.

I took a shift unexpectedly at the restaurant downtown today. Biked home and realized half-way that it was Tuesday night work crew at the Saint Paul Curling Club.

Stopped in to see what the summer projects were all about. Loni mentioned that while the roster wasn’t large, they’d managed to wait until the last minute, once again to complete things.

The ice set-up projects will start next week!

Hard to imagine that in just a month, fall activities will begin and temps will start to drop. The State Fair – our big Minnesota get together will be completed and Halloween on its way.

I’ve never known any place to have summer last less than three months. Why did I have a soul contract for this place again? If you’d asked me in 2001 if I’d ever leave California and venture to the mid-west, and a city, I’d have cringed. I always saw myself settling in the country like up in Napa or Petaluma with a large tract of land, maybe working for a vineyard.

The first time I got confronted with the idea of living in a city was when I took my first CTI coaching courses back in 2005. We did a guided “future self” meditation where we went to visit ourselves 20 years in the future. My future self was wearing a suit and hanging out in an office space in a city I didn’t recognize. The only ones I thought remotely close in size and scope were San Francisco or Los Angeles and I hated those places. I ran out of the room crying.

When much later, around 2008/2009 I was introduced to Minneapolis-St Paul I freaked out because it looked just like the “future self” meditation, and I felt like I’d been there before. It took several more coaching classes and sessions to consider that maybe my soul had been speaking for a long time. So, while it may have seemed like a sudden, or even insane decision by some who didn’t know the whole story – I’d been working with the idea for quite some time.

I tried to avoid it for about another year. Increasingly though I had this strange internal nudging going on. The temp jobs I took were more and more temporary – often working for companies that were about to go under or were in merger-acquisition. In the end, I stopped getting jobs altogether. The only thing that kept rearing its “ugly” head was this idea of re-location.

Our souls know exactly what we should be doing. Maybe, I knew better than to avoid the call too long. No need to get hit over the head with a two-by-four to wake up to my future.

Back at the curling club, we talked summer projects, curling, boats, an open bartender spot. We ate pizza and drank beer (and no I didn't do any work - I was told to come back next week) I was reminded just how fast the summer had gone. Perhaps the constant stream of interviews, job hunting and MIMA work kept me busy. Here I thought I’d have a job and move from my sub-let to my own apartment or something. No such luck.

Dreams don’t always land the way you think they will. We can have all the pre-conceived notions we want of life, or even the people in our lives and many times they’ll simply not add up. I had no idea what I was getting into when I first moved to the Twin Cities in March of 2010 with two suitcases and a dream.

The path and the journey has both been more amazing than I could have imagined and more daunting. I didn’t know when I moved that starting over would mean literally from scratch. Or that I would meet so many amazing folks from all walks of life, who’ve turned into friends. Or that I’d be confronted with the most difficult people and situations I’d ever experience, having to dig deep to find my True North, gain personal efficacy and know the potency of my determination and strength.

More changes are coming. The summer is winding down. Decisions need to be made. New choices, new vistas and grappling with our winter weather, once again. What magic will the holidays hold for 2018? A year of deep spiritual awakening.

What new horizons will show themselves and what will continue to stay the same, not quite going as planned or changing direction altogether. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Last weekend, I had the opportunity to join a team of curlers comprised of high performance team members. These young curlers normally compete at the national level with their competitive teams.

What an exciting event in which our team ended up winning the First Event Championship of the Saint Paul Curling Club’s Mixed Wind-Up. We played one game on Friday night and three, six-end games and one eight-end game on Saturday. Our last three were back to back!

Competitive mindset

I found myself witnessing what it takes to be in the winning mindset. In my time spent on curling teams of all shapes and sizes during the last eight seasons, my exposure to competitive play was limited to my season as an official. Even then, I did not actually join the teams on the ice or really have a sense for the dynamics of play.

My curling friends on this competitive team were consistently supportive of each other. There weren’t any aggressive glances because someone “messed up.” They may have collectively acknowledged adjustments they wished to make next time, but they kept up-beat. Furthermore, there was constant communication both at the time the shot was being called and while the rock was in play and being swept.

I also noticed that even though I was not at the competitive level generally, I wanted to and often did, play a high caliber game. We collectively pulled each other up. The teammates kept each other’s spirits high even when our shots didn’t make the mark and we joked around with each other. If we were down in one end, the strategy was simply adjusted to win, rather than sink down into the bad shots we had just played. Ultimately, my teammates did not consider losing a possibility.

Applying the techniques to other areas of life

Going into the week, I realized I could apply these techniques to other areas of my life. I realize that I learned the bad habit of a type of pessimism about the outcome of things. This is not the mindset my young teammates went into competition with at all. Instead, they believed almost like it was inevitable, they would win.

I recently decided to switch from hosting to serving at the restaurant where I have worked since October. I do not find this type of work easy or a slam dunk. I am more of a leader than a servant archetype. Nevertheless, I saw many advantages in pushing myself out of my comfort zone.

While I work on my marketing career and do what it takes to develop my applicable skillset, there is something to be said for the challenge of serving others, joyfully and providing an exceptional experience. Plus, the money is better. Part of my financial health plan for 2018 includes paying down some debts, saving money (finally) and putting myself into the realm of possibly moving back into my own apartment sometime this fall.

What it might look like to apply these techniques

First off, it may not go smoothly my first few times serving. Maybe someone will get angry, my timing will be inconsistent, or I’ll have to ask questions I forgot to ask the first time. Rather than get down, I will brush it off, use it to adjust my serving strategy and keep improving.

In my marketing work, I am applying to and interviewing for jobs. I have had a plethora of different feedback so far. When job hunting, you are in a constant adjustment – one thing you forgot to mention in one interview, is front and center on your mind the next one. Additionally, you can’t really let other people’s limited thinking or points of view get you down.

Yes, that hiring manager may not see past his or her nose and feel out my potential. But I won’t take it personally and will keep going. At some point, the right fit for myself and the company I apply to will fall into place. One of my bartender friends said, “it is statistically impossible to be turned down every time.” OK then!

Eight years ago, I didn’t even know how to throw a curling rock without falling over. This last weekend, I won a First Event Championship with elite curlers. My shots were just as important in the lead position as the rest of the team’s.

If I had given-up on my first few attempts at curling, I would never have experienced the fun, joy and thrill of this competition. I would not have met some wonderful new friends. I would not be a first event winner.